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[eligt]

Hey everyone,

I'm close to publishing my game Hexlide on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/684170

It's a simple, relaxing puzzle game where you slide rows of hexagons to match a pattern, similar to Rubik's Cube but simpler; you can solve puzzles using just your intuition compared to the Cube where you kinda need to know the basic rules.

I would like some extra testing from more people before release so I'm giving away free keys, just post in this thread if you're interested and I'll send you a free key!

[Woseseltops]

Looks good, I would like to try in exchange for feedback.

As you're so close to release (about a week?) I guess you're mostly interested in the kind of remarks that could be addressed relatively quickly, right?

[Quicksand-S]

Looks pretty good. I like the visual style and the concept seems sound. I'd give it a try.

[eligt]

Hey thanks guys.

Most likely I will have to bump the release date by a week or so as I'm having issues creating a 32 bit SteamOS compatible build, 2nd of Sept was just the earliest date I could release based on when I put the page as "Coming Soon".

Just sent you guys a private message with your key. Please note the game is still lacking sound effects and translations don't work yet (changing language will do nothing or load placeholder text).

[Quicksand-S]

Tried it out for a while.

I really like how the game looks. Everything is so slick and clean. Even the menu felt good to use.

When I started the game, it was unclear what the goal was. I would say that should be the very first tutorial message, otherwise players will waste moves at the start (especially since the board is slightly obscured). My guess was that I needed to bring all of the same-colored hexagons together, but I wasn't sure. Then I thought maybe they needed to be in a hexagonal shape, but that didn't work. For some reason, I didn't notice the outlined area. Maybe it was the color that made it not stand out until I realized it was there. Once I saw the outline, everything was obvious.

On level 2, the game froze on me when I was one step away from finishing.

I kept wanting to click on the row of hexagons rather than on the arrows. I'm not sure why.

I looked at a couple of later levels and then the game froze again, this time in the level select menu.

Anyway, I like it. It's a good concept and generally works well. The difficulty curve also appeared to be reasonable, but I didn't check out that many levels yet.

[Woseseltops]

Sorry, I just discovered that I will not be able to test your game before Friday... let me know if you would still be interested in feedback on Friday, otherwise I won't use your key.

[eligt]

@Quicksand-S Wow thanks for that! That's a good in-depth review and I really appreciate it. Yep, you're right about the outline not being super obvious, that is actually an issue that I thought about, which is why the outline fades in after loading the level. If I adjust that first message that appears to mention the objective, do you think that'll be good enough?

For the freezing, was it a complete app freeze, i.e. did Windows prompt you saying the app wasn't responsive? If not, would you mind trying it again and when it freezes press ESC and see if the screen changes? Thanks again for the help!

@Woseseltops That's absolutely fine. In fact, due to the issues Quicksand-S found, I will definitely not make the Sept 2 release anyway. Also, that key is yours, activate it and don't worry about it!

[Quicksand-S]

I think an initial message that says something about the goal would be enough. That said, it might also be a good idea to make the hexagons change in some obvious way when they're in the correct positions, so that it's clearer that those positions are "right". Then you could start the first puzzle with a hexagon in the correct spot and as soon as the player moves it, they would notice that it is not longer correct.

As for the freezing, it seemed to be a complete freeze but no I didn't get a Windows "unresponsive" message. I could alt-tab, and I could close the game without trouble or delay by just ending the program on the taskbar. I checked the task manager Performance tab and didn't notice extreme CPU use, although it was higher than I expected.

I opened the game to try it again and it froze instantly when I entered level 2. Escape did nothing, and clicking on the hexagons and menu options also did nothing.

[eligt]

@Quicksand-S Thanks for the extra feedback. Yep I had a feeling making the whole pattern matching more obvious would benefit the game but I was thinking I could get away without it to save time; however, hearing another developer point it out, now I can't ignore it so I'll think of a quick way to improve that.

One question, was music still playing when the game froze? If so, what happens if you leave the game running for a few minutes, does it switch to a new song or become silent? Again, thanks so much for testing and don't feel obligated to do more, I completely understand if you don't want to or can't.

[Quicksand-S]

I was playing without sound (muted in Windows) because I had someone watching TV nearby, so I don't know what happened with the music. I started the game up again tonight to check for you, but it didn't crash quickly and I wasn't prepared to spend a lot of time waiting for it (For all I knew, you might've even fixed the issue since posting).

[eligt]

@Quicksand-S Okay, thanks again for your input. Yes, I did indeed update the engine to see if it would fix the freeze so hopefully that did it.

[Woseseltops]

Okay, as promised I playtested on Friday, here's my feedback. I realize you're almost ready to release, so not all of it might be useful to you, but I hope some of it still will.

I am really positive about this game.
* The UI is really pretty and well done, also the animations. The fact that you even managed to do the level selection in hexagons, man, that's just excellent design.
* I like how I immediately understood the game with so little explanation. At the same time, the first one took me a long time... maybe make at least lvl 1 simple to solve to give me a feeling I can do this?
* The piano music is absolutely beautiful and works really well; it's a kind of atmosphere I haven't really seen before in a game. Sound and visual do not really seem integrated with the game yet, though... maybe some subtle sound effect when you're moving the pieces would solve this?
* Maybe it's not the kind of game you're aiming for, but I think this game would really benefit if it tried to evoke a bit more 'competitiveness' in the player. For example not sure what 'x/y moves' was displaying, but definitely y was not the minimum amount of moves... I would have liked it if it was used this way, so I got an idea of how much better I could have done. Also, take a look at Infinifactory, which after you solve a level show you statistics on how other players do... this really makes me want go back and do better than average.


Bugs
* The game becomes unresponsive whenever I press Windows+D (shortcut to go the desktop). Music keeps playing.

[eligt]

@Woseseltops Hey, thanks for the feedback and the compliments, that felt good!

Yup, I have sound effects and they're actually already in-game (although not necessarily final) but for some reason the engine I'm using doesn't work with .wav on Windows so I had to convert them to .ogg.

For the first Level I think I picked something that looked easy (because it's small with few hexagons) but it's actually not. Maybe I'll just reduce the goal hexagons to be matched to 3 or 4?

Actually I did want the game to have a bit of a casual competitiveness, like among friends, which is why it has friends-only leaderboards in addition to global ones. I honestly don't have an AI solver for the puzzles so those Moves numbers are my guesstimates as what's a "reasonable" amount of moves to solve the puzzle but the fewer moves you use the more points you get, and that's how it becomes competitive. Maybe that's not obvious enough?

I'm uploading a new build shortly, I'd love if you could try it out both to tell me whether you think it's annoying to have sound effects for every action and also the freeze/hang issue.

[Woseseltops]

I'd love if you could try it out both to tell me whether you think it's annoying to have sound effects for every action and also the freeze/hang issue.

OK!

[eligt]

I've pushed the new build onto Steam so you should be able to access it at your own convenience, let me know how it goes. Thanks!

[Woseseltops]

Just tried it, the Windows+D freeze is still there :/. Can you reproduce it at your machine? Cause all I do is load the game, press Windows+D, and it freezes while the music keeps going.

I think the sound effects are an improvement! The 'woosh' sound when moving pieces works well in particular. I think the 'click' sound when hovering a tile stands out too much a bit, and you hear it all the time (at least with my playstyle ). Maybe just making it less loud solves this already?

[eligt]

Thanks so much for the input! Yes, the purpose of preparing a build with the sound effects was so my sound guy can load the game and decide how to equalize the sounds and/or make improvements, it was harder to do without having the sounds in action.

Unfortunately I use Linux as my main system and I make the Windows build on a Windows VM which is not cooperating very well. I wanted to avoid dual booting as I do all my dev work on Linux, but I might just have to do that now for this phase. I'll let you know once a new build is ready if you want to try it

[eligt]

@Woseseltops I can't reproduce that freeze on WIN+D that you described. Does it happen when you're full-screen or in Window mode as well? What resolution, Windows version and architecture are you running? Would you be able to run the game from command line and see if you get any error messages printed?

[eligt]

Hey guys, sorry for the delay. Last night I worked on a solution for clarifying the objective of the levels. Instead of marking the matching cells, I added a label identifying how many were "Matched", check screenshot: https://goo.gl/PtuP4H

Do you think that's good enough?

[Quicksand-S]

That was a good idea. It's so simple, but really helpful. That said, I still feel like a change in size, shape, color or outline when something is matched would be good. Looking at that screenshot, the target locations didn't stand out at all until I actually looked for them. Also, the one that is in the correct spot blends in with the outline so much that nothing looks particularly special about it.